When the House passed a resolution last September condemning anti-Asian violence and discrimination, every Democrat voted in favor – only 14 Republicans joined it.
Why has this symbolic mood become a biased struggle?
House Republican whip Steve Scalise said lawmakers were “wasting their time with the benchmark,” but Democratic sponsor Grace Meng said “people’s lives are at stake.”
The horrific shooting in Atlanta plunged the country into an acute awareness and difficult debate about hatred directed at this community. And as with any massacre or terrorist attack, political finger-pointing is immediately intertwined in that very raw discussion.
Whether the murder of eight people, including six Asian-American women, at three spas fits the strict legal definition of hate crime, is a matter for law enforcement. President Biden is on his way to Atlanta today to show his concern about what he calls “brutality” against Asian Americans. What is disputed is that many people in the community are understandably scared.
We spent much of last year with racial injustice in the wake of George Floyd’s assassination, as well as unacceptable violence in the riots that followed. The media spends enormous amounts of time and energy on the prescribed prejudice and crime against certain communities: Violence against blacks. Violence against Jews. Violence against Muslims.
Unfortunately, Asian Americans are on the radar screen.
Despite a long history of discrimination – from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to Japanese internment during World War II – it has been considered a model minority in recent decades. The image is that of people who work hard, do not cause trouble and whose children achieve stellar degrees.
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They are also styled as quiet and submissive. They do not tend to rise to the highest political positions and have little visibility in the media. Vice President Kamala Harris, the daughter of an Indian immigrant mother, is an exception, and so is Andrew Yang.
Experts believe that there is no riotous symbol of folly, such as the noose or the swastika, against people of Asian descent. So sometimes there are disputes over whether a robbery of an Asian-American small business, for example, is a hate crime.
But when Amara Walker, a CNN Korean-American reporter, did a live recording for Don Lemon, someone drove by and shouted “Virus!”
This brings us to the renewed complaints about Donald Trump referring to the ‘China virus’, as he did again this week, or the ‘Wuhan virus’, or ‘Kung flu’, as he did in the past . Liberals and Democrats have long complained that Trump is contributing to a climate of prejudice against Asian Americans.
I hate how the Chinese regime originally covered up and mishandled the coronavirus, but I also believed that Trump’s use of these terms was an unattractive attempt to score political points.
There is a big difference to that and to tie the former president to the violence in Atlanta in any way.
As with all such mass shootings, it comes down to a crazy person with a gun. And I say after every tragic case that it is unfair to say that politicians have blood on their hands because some utility jobs have had access to destructive weapons.
The attack on Oklahoma City was not Rush Limbaugh’s fault, as Bill Clinton insinuated. The Gabby Giffords shooting was not Sarah Palin’s fault. The shooting of police officers was not Barack Obama’s fault. The shooting of Steve Scalise during a Republican baseball practice was not the fault of liberals who admired the gunman. And Atlanta is not Trump’s fault.
It is good to debate and criticize the rhetoric of a president or former president, but to go further if it quickly comes down to the fever swamps of bias.
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Rep. Doris Matsui, who was born in a Japanese-American internment camp, said during a house trial yesterday that people, as I have heard, use racist insults at the highest levels of government, such as ‘China virus’. spreading xenophobia and blaming innocent communities was all too well known. ‘
But Republican Rep. Chip Roy, after exposing Beijing’s handling of the virus, said: “My concern about this trial is that he seems to want to risk policing rhetoric.”
This debate may or may not get ugly, but it is no longer necessary.